The Death Note Hunter
by Bloom Momomiya
Summary: “Mariko is such a… special child… so unique,” But they don't know how different I really am. They don't know I am really a Death note Hunter. -- Adopted from Jasnah


AN: The credit for the original story goes to Jasnah, but she gave me permission to rewrite it and finish it. If I owned the original story, I probably wouldn't be typing this Author's Note right now. Same thing goes for Death Note, if I owned it I wouldn't be disclaiming it. SO DON'T SUE.

I am different. There is no other word for it. It's all I have heard over the 13 years I've lived. It's always been "Mariko is such a… special child… so unique," and "Miss Tsubame has achieved something none other her age could… she is incomparable!" However none of them know how truly… different I am.

Moving from Japan to Australia at the age of four was rough. I remember always asking my mom "Does this man speak Japanese? How about this one?" for two months, and the only reason I stopped asking in the end was because I had learnt to understand English.

Most parents tell their little sons and daughters happy stories about cats wearing hats and foxes in socks and green eggs and ham. My mom told me stories of murder notebooks and shinigami – gods of death. They were quite frightening, but I never told her to stop, because I was afraid of not being able to hear the end of the story.

On the day I turned five I realized that I was smarter than your average child. In my kindergarten, I was like a bright poppy in a field of white daisies. I could write full sentences easily while most children were learning the alphabet, and knew that one hundred really wasn't that huge of a number, compared to all the numbers out there.

My mother was intelligent as well. I'd like to think that I inherited my brains from her. Despite being a detective and a single mother, she had taken a lot of time off of work to home-school me, since the school system wouldn't push me up a grade. I eventually did go back to normal school, but in a higher level for my age.

My mom did well in society, especially for a woman. I know that sounds sexist, but generally single mothers get demoted if they are found out. Single fathers, on the other hand, are fantastic for some reason.

I never knew who my father was. Neither did my mother. I constantly pestered her on how she claimed she couldn't _possibly_ know who my father was, but she continuously denied ever knowing him. After I turned the age of seven, I started to question if she was even my real mother to begin with. I never asked out loud though. There was no question that we were both Japanese, but that's all the similarities on ethnic appearance. I had green eyes with a sort of European element to them, and a small mouth. My mom had warm, gray eyes and a large mouth with a beautiful smile.

In 2003, when I was 13 and just started 10th grade, my mom got promoted back to Japan. We quickly packed our bags, sold our house, and in less than two months were on the airplane to go to our origin country.

That day was one of the most horrible, depressing, and confusing days of my life.

_-+Somewhere Else+-_

_A man sat in a dark room, which was only lit by a dim candle and the glow of a way-too-bright computer screen. Photos stared at him from the screen – passport photos. Each with a name listed below it. The man copied down each word he saw into a black notebook, as well as a small paragraph after each name. Each paragraph matched._

_Picking up a baseball bat, the mysterious man smashed the computer to bits, destroying all evidence, before quickly exiting and lighting the abandoned warehouse on fire._

_In the darkest of nights, an evil laugh shattered the silence._

_No one was around to hear it._

_-+On the Airplane+-_

For the first few minutes of the flight, my mom and me joked around, and I watched in astonishment as the plane lifted off the ground, seeing as the last time I was on a plane was when I was four.

However, after a while, we both fell asleep.

I was shaken awake by the plane lurching, which caused me to fall out of my seat. My mother and I laughed, and I quickly got back up. I then sat down, only to be thrown out of my seat again by another lurch. This time my mom and I looked at each other, worried. By the look on her face, I could tell that she was thinking the same thing as I was, which was, "_Oh no... what's going on...?_"

Oxygen masks fell from the ceiling. An announcement came on, and echoed throughout the plane.

"_Attention everyone, um, we're having some... technical difficulties,_" Echoed the voice of a girl who, judging by her manner of speech, couldn't be older than 25, "_Please, like, put an oxygen mask on, as we fix this, um, minor problem._"

I looked at my mom with a shocked expression. She mirrored that expression right back at me, as if I were looking at my face on someone else's head, someone else's body. The two of us proceeded to put on our oxygen masks, afraid. We both knew that there was something much bigger than a minor problem going on.

By this time in my life, I knew how to take care of myself, and possibly my mother. My mom often called me her "Middle aged kiddie," even though she knew I didn't like that name. I could be responsible, intellectual, and logical, and had unofficially solved a couple of cases for my mom in the past.

About fifteen minutes after the oxygen masks popped out of the ceiling, another announcement came on.

However, it was not the announcement I was hoping for.

"Attention all p-passengers, w-we are sorry to confirm that one of our p-pilots has collapsed and the other one has… has… is gone," stuttered a stewardess through what sounded like tears, "We... we need you to r-remain secure while we f-find a way to land the plane safely."

In other words, unless there miraculously was a pilot on the flight, we were going to crash.

"We're all going to die!!" Someone yelled. The passengers all panicked, and I took deep breaths and clenched my fists in a futile effort to calm myself down. Calming yourself is a very difficult task when you know you're about to be dead.

Some people say that one's true self comes out when one is knowingly about to die. I believe it is just when a person is scared enough they realize all the hidden guilt's they have because they don't want to die a bad person. However it takes a lifetime to become a good person – not 30 seconds. When people realize they have used up their lifetime on being vain they suddenly want to become a good person. But occasionally you have a good person think they are bad, and they only think they are bad because they have secrets. There is nothing wrong with having secrets. We all have them don't we? That became clear to me when the words I had never thought I would hear came out of my mother's mouth.

"Mariko," My mother looked straight into my eyes, "You are not my daughter."

"Thanks for the confirmation, I figured that out when I was seven," I replied. My mother's expression turned into one of shock.

"And you couldn't have told me that before now?! I've been worrying about this for your entire life!!"

The plane started going down on a slope. All terror that might have been lost in learning this new bit of info was regained, as I suddenly clung onto my mom.

"Mariko! According to the government, you don't exist! I found you abandoned in a dumpster nearby some pub called Rukio's! I never declared your existence to the government for your own safety!"

"Safety?" I lost her at that point.

"Do you remember those stories I told you about when you were little? About–"

"Shinigami and Death Notes? Yeah," I replied. How could I not have remembered them? They scared me to death, but I refused to let her stop telling them.

The slope of the plane got steeper, and almost all of the passengers were either screaming or praying.

"They're all true! Each and every single one of my stories is true!" My mom yelled hysterically, "I'm a Death Note Hunter, Mariko!" My mind couldn't process what she was insisting. It just wasn't possible, for all of her fantasy stories about killer notebooks to be true, and that she was some sort of destroyer of them. I decided to ignore what she said.

"I love you mom..." I whispered, hugging her over the seat.

"I love you too, my daughter," She replied. We had nothing else to say after that. The two of us just clung onto each other, tears streaming down my mothers' cheeks as I began to scream, finally realizing that we were surely going to die. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that it would be a quick and not-so-painful death.

I didn't dare look out the window as the plane crashed into the ocean. I could smell smoke, despite all the water. My left arm stung as flames rose up against it, but I didn't dare open my eyes. Everything was in pain. How I managed to remain consciousness, I don't know. If the fire was burning my left arm and I was in the window seat, then where was Mom? I opened my bruised eyes just barely enough for me to see.

I appeared to have slipped out of my seatbelt and onto the ceiling of the plane. This meant that the plane was upside down. I looked up toward Mom, and saw her hanging limp, among all the other corpses strapped in their seats.

The fire flickered at my left arm, and I shuddered away from it. Water came in from my right, causing me to shake violently.

I could've lay there for hours and wouldn't have known it, for I passed out.

It was three hours before they found out I was alive.

Three hours before the survival toll went from zero to one.

Three hours before it was realized I was an orphan.


End file.
